senator mccain, i yield back to you. i yield to the senator from tennessee. mr. mccain: i yield. the presiding officer: the senator from tennessee. mr. corker: i thank the senator from arizona, south carolina and georgia for the comments that they have made. i have already addressed the issue of the speech. i want to talk about two -- and i agree with the comments that have been made by my colleagues here. i want to address the substance. we get caught up in terminology here and sometimes talk beyond each other. i don't know what most people are doing today, but the country almost came to a halt in august of 2011 as we negotiated some reductions in spending, $2.1 trillion worth. most people felt like that was not near enough. i know that everybody in this body has been contacted by fix the deck folks and others who think that we need to have a $4.5 trillion to $5 trillion deal that's done here. by the way, i agree 100% and had hoped that's what we were going to be doing during this month, so as the senator from south carolina said, we would have this behind us and we could focus